The Department of Energy has requested a roughly $250 million reduction in cleanup funding for the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee as crews complete major demolition at the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP).
The Trump administration has asked for $431 million in environmental management (EM) funding for Oak Ridge in fiscal 2021, which starts Oct. 1. That would be down 36% from about $682 million enacted in the current budget year.
It’s not clear that Congress, which appropriates federal funds, will agree with the president’s budget request. Lawmakers have regularly increased funding for environmental remediation around the DOE nuclear complex. For example, DOE requested roughly $408.5 million for Oak Ridge in fiscal 2019, but that was bumped up to roughly $646 million on Capitol Hill. The same process played out last year: the Energy Department requested about $429 million, but the enacted funding was $682 million.
However, the department expects in 2020 to wrap up a major job at Oak Ridge: cleanup of
ETTP, the former K-25 uranium enrichment site that was retired in the mid-1980s. The DOE Office of Environmental Management has overseen demolition of its five large gaseous diffusion buildings and many other buildings.
“We are going to clean that up this year,” Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette told Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) on Thursday during a House hearing on the new DOE budget request. “We are going to finish that project.”
The fiscal 2021 budget request does ask for continued funding for slab and soil remediation at ETTP, a project that will remain after the major demolition is complete. It’s not clear how long that effort might take. The DOE Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management has said it is preparing a study that could help determine how to treat contaminated groundwater at ETTP, and a proposed plan due in April 2021 could propose remedies.
Cleanup work at ETTP through the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund—which was established in 1992 and also applies to uranium enrichment sites in Paducah, Ky., and Portsmouth, Ohio—would be reduced from about $196 million in the current fiscal year to roughly $145 million under the president’s budget request.
“Decrease reflects completion of demolition of facilities,” DOE said in budget justification documents posted online this week.
The ETTP site, which has about 700 acres in its main plant area, is being converted into an industrial park. Brouillette told the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee on Thursday that “outside parties” are interested in the site.
Fleischmann, whose district includes Oak Ridge, said work is starting on the next phase of cleanup at the over 37,500-acre property that dates to the Manhattan Project in World War II. “This next phase will pave the way for growth of critical science and national security missions,” Fleischmann said.
The Energy Department property also houses the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the Y-12 National Security Complex, a National Nuclear Security Administration site that refurbishes nuclear weapons components and stores highly enriched uranium, among other activities.
Upcoming work includes projects at both of those two other sites. Among them are processing the remaining uranium-233 at ORNL for disposal and ongoing construction of the Mercury Treatment Facility at Y-12. Spending for both would be reduced under the 2021 budget request.
Spending on the uranium-233 disposition project would drop from $55 million in fiscal 2020 to $45 million. “Decrease reflects funding received in the FY 2020 enacted appropriation for preparing Building 2026 to process the remaining Uranium-233 material at Oak Ridge National Laboratory,” the budget justification said.
Construction work at the Mercury Treatment Facility at Y-12 would sink from $70 million to $20.5 million.
An explanation included in the justification for an overall decrease for deactivation and decommissioning work at Y-12 said the cut reflects funding that was received in fiscal 2020 for cleanup activities, reduced funding required for the Mercury Treatment Facility, and an increase requested for a planned waste disposal facility west of Y-12. The Mercury Treatment Facility could have a total project cost of $224 million. It’s not clear how the proposed cut in funding could affect construction work at the Mercury Treatment Facility, if at all.
The new waste disposal facility, which could store 2.2 million cubic yards of waste on 47 acres, would be used as remediation finishes at ETTP, the current landfill (the Environmental Management Waste Management Facility) fills up, and the cleanup work in Oak Ridge shifts to ORNL and Y-12. The new landfill has an approved cost range of $175 million to $375 million for its first phase, which will include design work.
Under the budget request, the new landfill would get a funding increase from $0 enacted in the current fiscal year to $22.3 million for design work in fiscal 2021.
The current landfill has enough capacity to meet the disposal needs of the site demolition that is currently funded. A specific completion date hasn’t been set for the new disposal facility; it will depend upon future funding for environmental operations on excess facilities at ORNL and Y-12.
Besides those projects, the fiscal 2021 budget request would continue shipments of transuranic waste from Oak Ridge to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, develop technologies for mercury cleanup, and test technologies for the design of the Transuranic Sludge Treatment Process.
The requested decrease in EM funding for Oak Ridge reflects a proposed overall cut to EM funding across DOE sites. The $6.1 billion budget requested for the Office of Environmental Management in fiscal 2021 would be down from the nearly $7.5 billion enacted by Congress. for the current fiscal year. That rose from the $6.5 billion requested by the Energy Department, and lawmakers are likely to do the same for 2021.
The Energy Department currently forecasts that Oak Ridge won’t be totally remediated before 2046.
